This review contains little/no spoiler content. Enjoy A couple years ago in 2021 I heard about a certain manga series in a YouTube videohttps://www..com/watch?v=G4XcGHX3EHY and upon hearing what the YouTuber had to say about it I vowed to never read this manga after realising it was just some spit fetish series without any substance. About a year later in 2022 this forbidden manga found me again and without realising why I thought it to be so familiar I began reading. In the present year of 2023 I look back on that sequence of events as one of the best mistakes Ive ever made regarding my time consuming anime and manga. Themes: In case you havent guessed already the forbidden manga I accidentally read was Nazo No Kanojo X or Mysterious Girlfriend X and in case you skipped the intro the main themes of Nazo No Kanojo is to put it bluntly The Writers Poorly Disguised Fetish. Spit play will probably be a dealbreaker for some people especially since it is featured in nearly every chapter. I should know as it was what turned me off the series initially. However the body fluid theme isnt just cheap niche fanservice and really helps to characterise the main leads but Ill mention that at the end. Just know that even though this aspect can be a hard swallow no pun intended its worth it or at the very least utilised well and serves the story and characters. The other themes aside from Romance/Comedy are just general Ecchi elements throughout. I typically dont mind Ecchi/fanservice content in a series and I am usually happy to just ignore it whenever it arises but considering the underlying motifs of growing up and adolescence in this manga as well as the lack of cheap tricks used to incorporate it the Ecchi in Nazo no Kanojo gets a gold star from me. Story: To the surprise of noone this RomCom manga pulls a revolutionary move which has never been done before and features characters who are in high school so the typical schoolsetting arcs that people who consume too much sliceoflife like I do will recognise instantly are present here such as the cultural festival arc a spontaneous youthful excursion to the beach by train ect ect. Despite this Nazo No Kanojo injects its own flavour into these otherwise average and overdone story beats and doesnt just rely on Urabes quirks to carry every part of the plot and genuinely creative plot points are created to avoid this. However even the selfcontained chapters which dont have a huge bearing on the plot and typically arent referenced again in the series are still a delight to read by virtue of Urabe and Tsubaki just being so entertaining to read about and this consistency in character quality allows the story to just flow naturally around them. Characters: Nazo No Kanojos biggest strength much like with most RomCom series lies in its characters. A lot of other series similar to this manga may fall due to a lack of compelling characters and ahem other ecchi elements taking centre stage yet Mysterious Girlfriend X strikes a great balance between the two. The titular Mysterious Girlfriend Urabe Mikoto is easily one of my favourite leads in a romance series. In my mind the Kuuderehttps://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Kuudere archetype was perfected when Riichi Ueshiba put pen to paper and Urabe was conceived. She delivers on the Mysterious aspect of the series in droves in the early parts of the series with her behaviour being entirely antithetical to that of a typical happygolucky deredere girl that might be more commonplace and the iconic reacurring scissorsinpanties joke no Im not kidding should be more than enough to sell anyone on her. The male lead Tsubaki Akira more or less a typical male lead for a series of this vein. He definitely has good moments throughout the series and I in no way dislike him but when compared to the majesty of Urabe its easy to view him as unremarkable. There are some points in the series where Tsubaki might blend in with the supporting cast but overall not a bad lead compared to other male leads that reader may be familiar with from other series. Art: I honestly cannot praise the art enough in this series. I have a huge soft spot for a 2000s manga artstyle but bias isnt even required when praising Nazo No Kanojos artwork. There are several points in the manga mostly towards the beginning and end depicting dreams that Tsubaki has had which contain Urabe. This could be used as a cheap fanservice moment in any other work but in this manga it is a source of pure awe at the amount of detail displayed. 600https://i.ibb.co/smWMMBp/mysteriousgfx.png Truly desktop wallpaper material. The doublepage spreads as well as the overall design of Urabe herself and how shes drawn in throughout the series is also high quality too not just in moments of sexual content. Finishing Thoughts: At its core Mysterious Girlfriend X is a story about growing up and how even though settings and circumstance may change as time progresses the bonds that you make with people closest to you are truly timeless. I refrained from putting Supernatural among the themes section in this review as I believe that there is nothing Supernatural about the spitbond that Urabe and Tsubaki share and that its merely their bond and relationship that allows their feelings to be transmitted in such a way and that this was intentionally ambiguous in order to convey this message. Its embarrassing that I connected with a stupid 2004 Ecchi manga in such a strong way and that Im looking in such detail at its story and characters when some might say it doesnt deserve such attention but I truly believe that this series is different to others of its calibre at least to me. But who knows? Perhaps the real Mysterious Girlfriends were the friends we made along the way...